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Thursday, April 1, 2010

Taking Note: Triduum

This past week I filmed bink hanging a crimson banner from the catwalk above the sanctuary for the beginning of Holy Week: Palm Sunday--called Passion Sunday in the old Catholic calendar, (passion, you know, coming from the Greek verb paschō, meaning "to suffer").

Passion Banner (2:11 min.)

Filmmaking is all about manipulation, but this really happened: down below, the organist and cantor truly were rehearsing the 22nd psalm, which Jesus recites on the cross:"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me."

Today is Maundy Thursday, the first of the great Three Days, or Triduum, leading up to Easter. (I wrote about foot washing on Maundy Thursday last year, in the second half of this post.)

bink will replace this crimson swag––and the purple banners she hung at the beginning of Lent––with new banners for Easter Vigil, this Saturday night.

[Later: bink's 3-minute video distilling the Good Friday night liturgy is here: Tenebrae.]______On a mundane note, and art making is all about the physical world:Heights make my stomach flip, so there was no way I was going out on the catwalk with bink, though I'd like to. You can see at one point that bink's attached to a wire cable, in case she falls off.Here, I'm lying on my stomach in the little doorway that opens onto the catwalk.

If you prefer secular stories at this season, you might like bink and my efforts from last year: Peeps Blow Up (1812 Overture)

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Quote of the Moment

“We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it’s really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it.”